We are satisfied, therefore, that the pure, cultivated, and pious
ladies of this country now exercise a very powerful, but quiet,
imperceptible influence in popular affairs, much greater than they
can ever again exercise if female suffrage should be enacted and they
should be compelled actively to take part in the affairs of state and
the corruptions of party politics.

It would be a gratification, and we are always glad to see the ladies
gratified, to many who have espoused the cause of woman suffrage if
they could take active part in political affairs, and go to the polls
and cast their votes alongside the male sex; but while this would be
a gratification to a large number of very worthy and excellent
ladies who take a different view of the question from that which we
entertain, we feel that it would be a great cruelty to a much larger
number of the cultivated, refined, delicate, and lovely women of
this country who seek no such distinction, who would enjoy no such
privilege, who would with woman-like delicacy shrink from the
discharge of any such obligation, and who would sincerely regret that,
what they consider the folly of the state, had imposed upon them any
such unpleasant duties.

But should female suffrage be once established it would become an
imperative necessity that the very large class, indeed much the
largest class, of the women of this country of the character last
described should yield, contrary to their inclinations and wishes, to
the necessity which would compel them to engage in political strife.
We apprehend no one who has properly considered this question will
doubt if female suffrage should be established that the more ignorant
and less refined portions of the female population of this country,
to say nothing of the baser class of females, laying aside feminine